THE literal "cycle of Cathay," or period of sixty years,--not the vague
literary expression of Lord Tennyson,--which has just ended, was probably
the most momentous for China, if not for the world at large; for it was in
1839 that the difficulties of intercourse between the East and the West
came to the first crisis. The year 1899 seems to mark another crisis,
which, as regards the integrity of the Chinese problem, may prove final.
Yet the situation in Far Eastern Asia was grasped by only a few Western
observers before 1895, when the struggle for suzerainty over Corea
revealed the helplessness of China, and lifted Japan to a seat in the
council of Powers. Though worsted in two foreign wars and nearly wrecked
by an internal convulsion, the government of the "Son of Heaven" had
learned nothing new and forgotten nothing old. The abortive issue of the
French attack in 1884 seemed even to give it greater arrogance, and to
increase the deference with which it was treated by Europe.

For ten years after the late Jules Ferry had declared Peking to be "une
quantite negligeable" events conspired to prove his estimate incorrect.
The Burlingame burlesque was forgotten, and the Dragon was again believed
to be awakening. He looked very formidable--at a distance. Taking into
consideration the blindness of the British, who had been the pioneers of
trade, and whose commercial supremacy was still unthreatened, to the
political and social conditions of the country, we need not wonder at the
ignorance displayed by other peoples. English military experts referred to
China as a desirable ally in the struggle, then thought imminent, of Slav
and Saxon over India. A succession of muzzled or incompetent envoys
represented Queen Victoria at Peking, and set to the consuls throughout
the Chinese Empire an example of subservience to native authorities
intensely mortifying to the foreign commercial communities which had grown
to prosperity under a more vigorous regime. The lives and property of the
Queen's subjects became so cheap that they were the favorite toys of petty
mandarins.

During all this period the attitude of the American government and people
was different, but hardly more enlightened. The relations of the United
States to china were peculiar; the few American resident merchants, who
had built up fortunes by exporting Oriental produce, disappeared, and no
large importers had arisen. The delusions of a prohibitive tariff and a
purely home market paralyzed American enterprise abroad, and the effect of
our navigation laws was to deprive us of that share in the carrying trade
of Asia which we had enjoyed before our civil war. On the other hand, an
enormous influx of Chinese peasants upon the Pacific coast had glutted the
labor market, and produced as bitter a racial hostility to them as could
be reciprocated by the untraveled multitudes of the Flowery Land.
Familiarity with the Chinese individual in our own country had bred
contempt for his nation at home, and the interests, missionary rather than
commercial, of American citizens in China were more courageously though
not more skillfully upheld than those of European subjects.

How long the nations of the West might have indulged in pleasant dreams of
a self-instructed Chinese monarchy holding out both hands for the world's
commerce and civilization, varied by that strange recurrent nightmare
known as "the Yellow Peril," it is difficult to say. But the internal
ferment and consequent expansion of Japan hastened the awakening. At first
the attention of Europe was concentrated on the naval struggle in the
Yellow Sea, from which it was thought possible to learn valuable lessons
in armament and tactics. Even after the destruction of Chinese sea power
and the occupation of Corea by Japanese troops, the danger threatening the
Celestial Empire itself was not realized in Europe. China, it was widely
and confidently asserted, could absorb Japanese armies as she would a
duststorm. They must simply melt away, leaving their island homes
depopulated. The conservative prophets were so rapidly discomfited that
bewilderment seized the press and politicians of Great Britain. The Yellow
Peril bogey was transferred to Japan, and when Germany, Russia, and France
decided to interfere, the authorities of Downing Street seemed willing to
be ignored. Had a strong personality ruled the counsels of the Queen
something might have been done to save British prestige; but Lord Rosebery
was a man of many moods and many minds, hampered by an unpopular domestic
policy which he had inherited together with that Elijah's mantle of
leadership which was soon to trip him up.

The events which followed the Treaty of Shimonoseki are within the memory
of every adult reader of the newspapers. Book after book has been
published, professing to give a solution of the Far Eastern question, and
often embodying merely the prejudices of a compiler or the perfunctory
notes of a flying journalist. The utterances of the Honorable G.N. Curzon
and Mr. Archibald R. Colquhoun were the most important, until the
publication recently of Lord Charles Beresford's report to the British
Associated Chambers of Commerce. (The Break-up of China. Harpers.) Lord
Charles appeals not only to the commercial classes of his own country, but
to the public of the United States as well; he is, like his predecessors,
a believer in a fair field and no favor for all nations in China, but in
addition to this he advocates an Anglo-American entent, which, with the
probable adhesion of Japan and possibly of Germany, he regards as
necessary to maintain the "open door." The alternative policy he judges
"certain to encompass the doom of China, and equally certain to produce
international strife. Mastery in Asia under a system of 'spheres of
influence' will not be determined by effusion of ink."

The merit of this report lies in the fact that it gives the results of
careful investigations on the spot by a man of world-wide fame in his
profession, having extensive knowledge of human nature and a judgment as
open and impartial as robust patriotism and special associations ever
leave to us at maturity. Beresford received the confidence of all
Anglo-Saxon communities in China, as well as assurances of sympathy from
German traders and of hearty support by the people and press of Japan. He
had access to the highest officials of the Chinese government, and almost
every facility for verifying the military and naval collapse of the
empire. He was also interviewed by the fugitive leader of the ill-fated
Reform Party in China, which was overthrown by the coup d'etat of
September, 1898. He saw the Russians at work in Manchuria and the Germans
in Shantung, and he listened to the grievances of Englishmen against their
consular service, to which some reformers in this country are wont to
point as a model. He has studied the treaties, and observed the
administration and effects of the tariff which depends upon them, as
conscientiously as the forts and arsenals which might have more personal
interest for a rear admiral who has seen active service. Above all, he has
learned how to assimilate and condense the vast amount of information
which he received, how to discard the extreme view, and how to sift the
unfounded assertion. Whether or not one may agree with the practical
utility of the open door policy, the Break-up of China is the most
available and authoritative statement of essential truths for a student of
politics or a seller of produce in the Orient.

Lord Charles has assuredly made out a good case against the inaction or
opportunism of the British government amid recent developments, and he
shows how seriously British and American trade is menaced by the closing
of an immense general market. The advent of the United States to a seat on
the court-martial of Powers which is trying the case of China is likely to
be of great moment. Hitherto the majority has been distinctly inclined to
give a sentence of summary decapitation and dissection. America, secure in
a splendid isolation and confident in the permanent sufficiency of her
domestic market, regarded the Oriental problem as academic, and its
solution as immaterial to her welfare, until the guns of Admiral Dewey
stirred the masses of his fellow countrymen to a keen sense of their needs
and responsibilities. But other than sentimental reasons must be advanced
for our undertaking with Great Britain or a syndicate of Powers to
buttress the tottering colossus of China.

Almost all statistics of the foreign trade of China are based upon the
returns of the Imperial Maritime Customs, which do not include the figures
of import or export by overland routes. But the commerce of Western Europe
and America is almost wholly sea-borne, and Lord Charles Beresford shows
how great our export trade to China is, and how much it increased during
the decade which ended with 1897. In free competition with British plain
gray and white cotton goods, the American variety has risen from fourteen
and a half per cent of the total import eleven years ago to twenty-nine
and a half per cent during the year before last. The figures given by
Consul-General Jernigan in his report of October 25, 1895, indicated that
the value of the direct sea-borne trade relations between China and the
United States for 1894 was greater than that between China and the
European continent (Russia excepted); that it was more than double that
between Russia and China, and amounted to nearly five eighths of the
direct trade of Great Britain with China. Mr. A.R. Colquhoun stated that
"the volume of the United States trade with China represented more than
one seventh of the entire foreign trade of the empire in 1896. While the
import trade from China has increased slowly, the export trade to China
has increased one hundred years, and is more than fifty per cent larger
than the German exports." (China in Transformation, page 156.) A
depression in 1898, due in part to our war with Spain, is more than offset
by the estimates for 1899. And all this notwithstanding the purchasing
power of Chinese silver has fallen thirty per cent since 1893.

Our present rivalry with Russia is in kerosene oil. But the Russian oil is
so much inferior that dishonest methods are employed to introduce it. Tins
and cases which have contained American oil and still bear its trademarks
are used to pack Russian oil, to the injury of the American exporter and
the native consumer. Another branch of American trade, and one capable in
an open market of indefinite development, is the importation of flour for
the northern provinces; but if these regions of China, where wheat instead
of rice is the staple food of the people, should be acknowledged as the
Russian "sphere of influence," the exclusion of American flour and oil by
administrative enactment is sure to follow. It is, moreover, noteworthy in
the statistics of the northern ports that American imports have more
generally increased in that section than in the Yangtse Valley or the
southern provinces, where they are not at present threatened with
political discrimination.

Russia has always been served by the best men she has in the career of
diplomacy. With her especially it may be said that "a diplomat is an
honest man sent abroad to lie for his country." There may be significance
in the fact that her present ambassador at Washington has played a great
part in the overshadowing influence of the Tsar at Peking. Of course, the
cabinet and the press are given to understand, with extreme unctuousness,
that Russian influence in Asia is friendly to American interests; but it
is well to remember, as a guarantee of Russian good faith, the recent
crime against the liberties of Finland.

Lord Charles Beresford's chapters on Railways and Waterways are highly
interesting, because it is by facility of travel and transportation that
the dough of Cathay must be leavened. But the distinguished defender of
the open door is not always consistent in his exposition. He is inclined
to surrender in practice a crucial part of his policy for the sake of
getting it adopted in theory. "If the open door policy is maintained
throughout China," he writes, "the more countries who employ their capital
and energy in making railways, the better it will be for British trade;
but in order to secure the open door policy, it may be that we shall have
to concede to other countries preferential rights or spheres of interest,
as far as railway enterprise is concerned. This we have already done with
regard to Germany in Shantung and Russia in Manchuria, and the question
arises, What is our position in the Yangtse Valley, where other Powers
possess railway concessions?" Very pertinent; but if there are to be
spheres of railway influence, why should there not be spheres of mining,
bridging, conservancy, or other engineering influence? Where are they to
cease, and how are they to be regulated? It would be a jungle of
jurisdictions, a gnarled knot of privileges which only the sword could
cut. We have already, as pointed out by Lord Charles, an example of
conflicting courts in the residential concessions at the port of Hankow,
where the invalidity of certain titles to real estate is the distress of
the occupants, and would be the despair of an American conveyancer.

The trouble is that there has been no definite agreement among the Powers
since the collapse of China was made clear to the meanest intellect. Each
government has been bullying Peking in its turn, demanding this or that
contract or concession with or without the color of a pretext. Where only
a harbor or a fringe of seacoast is involved, the disadvantages of the
scramble policy may not be immediately patent; but when it is extended to
the complicated charters of public carriers, the development of mineral
resources, or any enterprise requiring the employment of intricate
machinery and skilled labor, the absurdity is manifest. It might reach
such proportions that the consent of five Powers would be necessary to
construct a breakwater in the Gulf of Pechili, or that one Power could
veto the opening of a switch at a railway junction in the Yangtse
Valley.

No such compromise is possible. Either, as Lord Charles Beresford believes
and in the main strongly presents to us, "the world must adhere firmly to
the open door and equal opportunity policy," with its logical sequence of
a revival of the imperial authority in China by injecting stimulants and
vigorously chafing the extremities, or there must be accurately surveyed
and delimited geographical regions, where Briton, Cossack, Frank, Teuton,
Japanese, or Yankee may grow whatever crop of institutions he may prefer
and the soil can bear.

Is it for the benefit of the United States to deal with China as a vast
unit under her native flag, or as fragments under many flags? That is what
we have to decide; and Lord Charles confesses that, when he passed through
America, the public mind was partly distracted from his message by the
acute stage of the Philippine problem. It is to be hoped that our
government is silently exercising the utmost vigilance in behalf of our
commercial privileges on the continent of Asia. Failure to do so might not
be politically disastrous to the present administration, but posterity
will not forgive nor history condone faults of omission or indifference
after such warning as have already been given. Surely, no American
administration would seriously contemplate the establishment of a
dependency or protectorate on the mainland of China, while our interests
there may be safeguarded by international control and reciprocity; but it
is difficult to see how these securities can be obtained without more
definite engagements on the part of our State Department than our
uninformed public opinion now demands. Nevertheless, the signs of a
healthy and growing interest are numerous. The American Asiatic
Association of those directly interested in the Far East was formed last
year, with headquarters at New York, corresponding to the British China
Association, and may in time possess equal weight. A very valuable
document, Commercial China in 1899, has been issued by the Bureau of
Statistics of the Treasury Department at Washington, and gives in a
concise and intelligible form the main facts and prospects of the
situation. A wide dissemination of this pamphlet is earnestly to be
desired; and every factor is to be encouraged that brings home to American
manufacturers and merchants the opportunity that awaits them,--an
opportunity that, by a wise foreign policy and far-sighted commercial
methods, can add immensely to our trade and to our international
influence.